Deadly tornadoes strike South, GOES-16 stands vigil

Severe storms have ravaged the South this week from Texas to South Carolina. As of Tuesday morning, the following stats were calculated from the IEM Warning and LSR websites:

• 525 Warnings Issued

• - 327 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings

• - 97 Tornado Warnings

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• 551 Local Storm Reports

• - 40 Tornado Reports

• - 414 Wind Reports

• - 97 Hail Reports

Thanks to the College of DuPage Weather Center, this is the first severe weather outbreak that most meteorologists have been able to follow in real-time with GOES-R (GOES-16) satellite data, which should provide forecasters with new insights into storms that can help avoid tragedies like the ones I write about below.

These animations show screen captures of the infrared, visible, and water vapor images from GOES-16 one and five-minute data from April 2 and 3rd:

WARNING: NOAA's GOES-16 satellite has not been declared operational and its data are preliminary and undergoing testing.

On Sunday, April 2, a likely tornado (storm survey ongoing) moved through Alexandria, Louisiana. Two people were killed in Mississippi. In a tragic story out of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, Edrick Alexander went out to the grocery store and returned to his mobile home destroyed by an EF-1 tornado. His pregnant wife and 3-year-old daughter had been killed. In this video, he tells his story.

KATC-TV 3, Acadiana's news channel says in this article that the family has a GoFundMe in progress. Please consider donating if you can. It had spiked from $400 Monday morning to $1900 Monday evening, and currently Tuesday morning has reached its goal of $5,000, raised by 120 people. The money will be used for a funeral for Francine Gotch an her daughter Nevaeh Alexander. I can't even imagine this man's grief; please donate if you can.

In this video, I captured some meteorological details about the storms Sunday, including plots of satellite, radar, watches and warnings, local storm reports, observations, and rotational radar signatures via GREarth software:

On Monday April 3, over 50,000 people lost power in Georgia from high winds and tornadoes. We won't know until later today or tomorrow what strength of the twisters were. Here are some highlights of the radar:

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